Shimmer (or, 'I Try')
by Kelsey
Summary: Angel looks at Conner and sees all the potential in a child. Songfic.


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Shimmer

(or, 'I Try')

by

Princess McPhee

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Disclaimer: Not mine. Though I wouldn't mind if Angel and Conner were mine! : ) But they're not. : ( And the song, is by Shawn Mullins, and is definitely not mine.

Author's Note: Though I don't watch Dawson's Creek anymore, I still love the CD of their songs. This is one of my favorites, and listening to it recently, I just thought of Angel and Conner.

Summary: Angel watches the love and kindness his son puts into the world, and wishes everyone could stay they way they were born.

Rating: PG

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I look down at my son, sleeping innocently in my arms. In the arms of a deadly predator, but he doesn't know that. When he grows older, he's going to wonder why I drink blood and don't go in the sunshine. And when he gets a little older than that, he's going to wonder why the things we hunt, kill, and hate have so much in common with his father.

And one day, he's going to figure out what I am, and he's going to be disgusted by me, and he's going to leave. He's going to leave, and I'll never see him again. Not that I deserve better than that, because I don't, but it's going to tear me apart just the same.

It's going to hurt worse than it did to leave Buffy.

He opens his eyes, and looks up at me now. He's not a fussy baby, not a whiner. He only cries when he wants something, and he sleeps as much as can be expected of a four-month-old. Which isn't much, but just the same, he's a good baby. 

When he's awake, all he does is watch the world go by. Like he's afraid that if he's whines or cries or fusses, he'll miss something important. I've been in this world so long that I frequently drop out of it for moments, and don't care if I don't see a leaf fall from a tree.

But to Conner, that would be a tragedy. Because he wants to see everything. And I'm going to help him with every power at my disposal, because he deserves to see everything.

__

His shining eyes are big and blue  
And all around him water flows  
This world to him is new  
This world to him is new

Everything. If there's one good thing about being a vampire, it's being able to see all of the wonderful (and terrible) things that are in the world, around the world, outside and under the world. Even I, two hundred forty-four and counting, am still learning new things with every moment on the planet. I hope I never run out of new things to learn, because that's the only thing that makes living worthwhile.

And if there's one thing that's terrible about being a father, it's being responsible for all of the choices of the precious little life you created. It's _you_ that decides how he turns out, it's _you_ who decides if his life is worth living. It's you who chooses how he lives his life, at least for a significant period of time. 

And it's you who decides if he does all the things he was born to do.

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He's born to shimmer  
He's born to shine  
He's born to radiate  
He's born to live  
He's born to love  
But we will teach him how to hate

The thing I dread about Conner, the _only_ thing I dread about Conner, is that one day, he's going to leave me forever. And I don't mean if he chooses to leave my side because he's better than me, I mean when he dies. Even if he lives a normal human lifespan, he'll be gone long before I am.

Time moves on. And the natural order of things means that all has to change. That people have to come and go, so that the world can keep on changing. It's just another figure of my supernatural status that I don't even conform to the changes of time. Unless I am killed, I will live forever. I don't know how old the oldest vampire was, but I could live for a hell of a long time. 

The Master was well over a thousand.

I could live to be more than fifteen times as old as my son can.

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And this thing we call our time  
I heard a brilliant woman say  
She said, 'you know it's crazy how I want to try and capture mine'  
I think I love this woman's way  
I think I love this woman's...

As my feelings for Cordelia have grown stronger, I'm immensely glad that she's here to help me raise my son. Sometimes I still wish I lived in Sunnydale, because there, my son could have many more people to imitate as he gets older, people besides his vampire father to watch for a sign of what's the right thing to do.

But I'm grateful for the LA crowd, too. Because Gunn, for all his bluster and tough exterior and impulsiveness, is a great guy, and I can't wait until Conner is old enough for him and me to teach the little guy how to swordfight. With sticks or some other blunt object, of course.

And Wesley, for all this proper British sensibilities and the annoying habit of trying to live his life with only books to guide him, is a real man of substance. He knows, just seems to feel, deep in his soul, what's right and wrong. And I want Conner to grow up and see that, want him to learn from Wesley how to read a thousand different languages, and how to decipher codes, and most importantly, how to make the right choices in a world where there's frequently no pleasant ones to be made.

And Fred, well she can teach him about gentle and kind and forgiving. She can teach him never to hold a grudge, and that little personality quirks are cute and quickly forgiven and forgotten so long as you're kind and friendly. She can show him that whoever you are, there's a use for you in the world, and she can teach him about loving people even if they're not perfect.

But it's Cordelia I want Conner to think of as his mother. And God knows I'll never tell her that, but I wish she were. Sometimes I think about Buffy, too, and I'm so sad that she can't be here, can't love my child as if he was her own, the way I know she would if she were still the same person she was when I left three years ago. But she's not, and I fell in love with sixteen-year old impetuous, smart-mouthed, sweet, naive little Buffy, and though I still love her, it's not the same.

She's not the same.

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The way she shimmers  
The way she shines  
The way she radiates  
The way she lives  
The way she loves  
The way she never hates

Conner was either a gift to me, or a curse. A gift, because though I've spoken about it with no one, not being able to ever be a father has been one of my greatest regrets since I started to become a part of the world again, thanks to Buffy five or six years ago. At the same time, I was incredibly scared at the idea of being a father, fearful of transferring some of Angelus's evil to the child. And for that reason, I was glad I couldn't be.

Now that Conner's here, sometimes I wonder if someone is trying to curse me a third time. After all aren't there just tons of people in the world who would like to see my unhappy? And what could make the souled vampire more unhappy then irrevocably screwing up his own son, something that I still have nightmares about every third night. He's just so special, and I'm a former serial killer. How can I be trusted to raise him?

Sometimes I just need love. Someone to reassure me that I'm worth trusting.

Sometimes Buffy comes to me in my dreams, and together we relive the moments that are favorites of ours. First kiss, first grope, first time we said 'I love you'. Sometimes I have to hear someone say that.

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Sometimes I think of all this that surrounds me  
And I know it all as being mine  
But she kisses me  
And she wraps herself around me  
And she gives me love  
She gives me time

And other times, I know it won't do anything to stop the pain that wracks my body, the fear that makes me shiver, the anxiety that pulls me as taut as a bowstring. Conner is a precious being, and what am I doing raising him?

But I know the others will jump in and stop me if I'm about to ruin it. And that leaves me secure enough to spend my time just trying my hardest to be a good father to little Conner.

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Yeah, yeah  
I feel fine  
Hey here now, hey yeah yeah  
I feel fine

He's the only thing besides Buffy who's every made me feel my life on this planet had a purpose. If I could go back and never be born, I would gladly do so. That's not to say I'm suicidal, now that I'm here, and it did happen, and Angelus did wreak havoc on the world, I have to make up for it. I can't just die. But if I could keep it all from happening in the first place...

But Buffy changed that. She made me feel like I had a purpose on the planet, and even if I could never take back the things I'd done, there was a reason I'd done them, that there was a greater power looking over our shoulders and fixing things if we screwed up too bad.

Conner makes me feel that, too. 

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But time I cannot change  
So here's to looking back  
You know I'd drink a whole bottle of my pride and I'd toast a change  
To keep these demons off my back  
Just get these demons off my back

I look at him, and I'm so envious. I see all the things in him that I always wanted to become, since I got my soul back, at least. I see a future. I see an unadulterated view of the world, with neither hate nor prejudice coming naturally to him. He has to be taught to do those things, and I swear I won't teach him them.

Because I want to be my son. I want to have that clean slate, have everything wiped away until there's nothing left but the love and kindness my son was born with. That _I_ was born with, so long ago, even though that thought almost makes me laugh at it's absurdity.

It's a thing that every child is born with. That sense of love and life and not the slightest sense of hate.

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Cause I want to shimmer  
I want to shine  
I want to radiate  
I want to live  
I want to love  
I want to try and learn how not to hate  
Try not to hate

I suppose there are adults who have managed to become better than average. And there are certainly people that have a better sense of right and wrong than others. 

But nobody has it like a baby. That state of pure kindness is what every being, breathing or not, should ascribe to be.

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We're born to shimmer  
We're born to shine  
We're born to radiate  
We're born to live  
We're born to love  
We're born to never hate

I look down at him, asleep in my arms. Then I look across the room at Gunn and Fred, curled up in each other, reading something together. Cordelia, draped across the counter, Gru not here for the first time in ages. Wesley, his nose in his book.

And I think about how much better we've gotten, ever since Conner came into our lives. I wasn't the only one to be affected. They all were. Every person in this room, plus some that aren't here, would lay down their life for my child.

All because he's doing what every human was born to do.

He's loving without hate.

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He's born to shine  
He's born to shine  
He's born to radiate  
He's born to live  
He's born to love  
But we will teach him how to hate

Nobody will ever teach Conner to hate.

Not if I can help it.

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